


we can make it right

by beastlyboop



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: M/M, not explicitly stated but they're like high-school age here, sorry if i got the bug parts wrong i'm not an entomologist and it's 3 am, this is really just an excuse to flesh out my "irkens are insect-like" headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-11 10:42:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11712741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beastlyboop/pseuds/beastlyboop
Summary: Dib watches the way the light reflects off the red of Zim's eyes and thinks it's easier, now, to forget that they were once enemies.-Zim gives Dib a very brief lesson in Irken.





	we can make it right

**Author's Note:**

> hey here's my 16 year-late invader zim fic enjoy everybody

Dib watches the way the light reflects off the red of Zim's eyes and thinks it's easier, now, to forget that they were once enemies. He rests his cheek in his hand and watches the way Zim's thin fingers draw his pen over the notebook on the table between them in neat vertical rows of a language he barely understands. He only barely understands it because convincing Zim to teach him is like pulling teeth. Dib has tried and failed several times to reverse engineer the language on his own with what little he knows, but it is  _very_  little, and he has a feeling Zim likes it that way.

Zim's handwriting in any human language is always completely unreadable, the lines always shaky, the loops too high or too low, and his spelling and grammar often leave something to be desired. But his Irken is clean and sharp, written with ease either vertically or horizontally, and several times diagonally, and Dib thinks he might have seen him writing backwards once but he can't be sure.

“What are you writing?” Dib asks, reaching across the table. Zim pulls the notebook away and looks at him, lip curling in disdain.

“None of your business,  _Dib_ ,” he huffs, and Dib knows he's not quite as annoyed as he pretends to be.

“I thought I saw my name,” Dib tests, standing from his seat to lean over the table.

“Wrong,” Zim says, closing the notebook quickly. “Your  _meat-brain_  is mistaken.”

“Uh-huh...Maybe I  _am_  wrong,” Dib concedes, settling back into his chair, and Zim nods appreciatively. “I suppose I was just  _taught_  to read it wrong.”

Zim's antennae twitch in annoyance and he squints at him and purses his lips, and Dib can't help but crack a smile.

“The teaching was perfect, your  _baby-brain_  can't grasp the greatness of the  _Irken_  language.”

Dib rolls his eyes and just chuckles as Zim continues to glare at him. When he goes back to writing Dib notes the way Zim scribbles out the last few words he wrote and then continues on, his pen snapping across the page in concise movements, quickly leaving behind bold blocks of words. Dib realizes something so suddenly he could smack himself.

“Can you speak Irken?” He asks, and he only realizes how  _stupid_  that sounds when it's leaving his mouth, and the look Zim gives him only serves to make him feel even more like an idiot.

“I mean-- is it a  _spoken_  language?”

Zim just scoffs and goes back to writing, shaking his head. “What kind of  _idiot_  question is that?”

Dib scratches his chin thoughtfully and looks up at the wall behind Zim, watching the clock. He's never heard Zim speak Irken before, or any of the very few other Irkens he's had the displeasure of meeting.

“Why don't you speak Irken?”

“Who do you suggest I  _speak_  with,  _Dib-boy_?”

Dib looks back to Zim and realizes the alien is staring right at him with a look that suggests he's waiting for Dib to actually answer, and he realizes a moment too late that he might have been a little insensitive. It's been several years since the last time Zim had any contact with his homeworld or any other of his kind.

“You could teach me,” Dib suggests, and he's not sure but he thinks Zim looks insulted.

“The Irken language is too advanced for your primitive  _ **human**_ _worm-brain._ You would die if I even attempted to teach you. At the very _least_  you would go completely stupid.”

“Fine, don't teach me,” Dib sighs, starting to pack up his things to leave. His textbooks have remained open to the same page since he set them down a few hours earlier. This was probably the least effective study session he's ever been a part of. “Listen, Zim, I've got to get home.”

Zim leans back in his chair and closes the notebook again, a pale green finger keeping his place between the pages, and he looks up at Dib suspiciously. When he seems to realize this isn't another attempt to see what he's writing his expression softens, or at least as much as a face like his could soften, and he frowns.

“Sit down, Dib,” he says, and Dib's eyes search Zim's own, the light catching the tiny individual lenses of his compound eyes, a sea of sparkling red. He can't remember when he stopped being afraid to look Zim in the eye.

Dib sits, and he waits. Zim shifts and frowns, looks away, shoves his pen between the pages of his notebook and lifts his hand to cough. He squares his shoulders and opens his mouth.

When Zim speaks Irken, he sounds like he's choking. It's all hard consonants and sharp clicks, and apparently the spoken Irken language does not have vowels. Zim spits, grunts low and deep and hacks from the back of his throat. But Dib barely hears any of it as his eyes are so intently trained on Zim's mouth that he can't focus on much else.

Dib searches for the word –  _mandibles_. Two sharp  _mandibles_  fold out of Zim's open lips and shudder as he speaks, dark green and glistening. Dib wonders just  _where_  they hide in his mouth when he's not using them. They twitch along with the harsh  _k-kshh's_ and  _tksh's_ of Zim's language and then slowly retract into his mouth when he's done, leaving a dribble of spit along his chin which he quickly wipes away.

“Have you gone completely stupid? I warned you,” Zim says after a minute of silence and shakes his head, and it's only then that Dib realizes he's still staring at Zim's mouth.

“W..what did you say?” Dib asks, swallowing.

“I said  _mind your own business, Dib-worm_.”

When Dib tries to speak Irken he ends up spitting all over the table. Zim laughs and tells him that he would die if he even  _attempted_  to actually speak Irken, and it's lucky that he's so  _stupid_. Still, his heart flutters when Zim tells him it was a good attempt.

He knows he'll learn eventually, if he can get Zim to teach him.


End file.
